Bell Canada Sees Continued Growth in Wireless and DSL

Bell Canada Enterprises cited wireless services and DSL as its hottest growth areas in 2003. For Q4, Bell Canada added 189,000 net cellular and PCS customers in Q4, giving it a total of 4,412,000 wireless subscribers, up 13% for the year. Bell Canada also added 91,000 net DSL customers in Q4, giving it a total of 1,482,000 subscribers, an increase of 34% compared to last year.


Financially, Bell Canada reported Q4 revenues of $4.91 billion compared to $5.05 billion in Q4 last year. Revenues from continuing businesses decreased by $44 million or 0.9%. The company said its overall decrease in revenues for the quarter was mainly due to lower revenues from its Enterprise and Wholesale businesses. To increase profitability, the company made deliberate decisions to exit certain business lines. Business revenues were also affected by a continued weakness in demand, stronger competition and regulatory pressures.


The Bell ExpressVu satellite TV service added 35,000 net subscribers in Q4 and 83,000 for full year 2003; total subscribers in 2003 increased by 6.4% to reach 1,387,000 at 31-Dec-2003. http://www.bce.ca